Archive for Mar 2011

Never go to the food store hungry. We know it's tempting, especially when you're hungry and there's not much in the pantry and you've got to cook dinner. Don't do it! Or you'll be like Eric last night, who went to the food store for hamburger meat, buns, cheese and a red onion (we had burgers) and returned with all that, plus a bag of chips and a can of frosting and some beer. 3 hours later we both had stomach aches, half the chips were gone and there was a slightly depleted frosting can. See what happens when you go to the store hungry? We suggest eating a cookie first, to take the edge off. Or have some Asparagus Tart. Whats asparagus tart you ask? It's pretty awesome is what it is. A flaky pastry topped with cheese and caramelized onions and pancetta and asparagus. Yum. This is a perfect party

For some reason, pot roast doesn't conjure up images of succulent braised meat bursting with flavor as it falls apart on your fork. Not sure why that is, as that has definitely not been our experience. Maybe it has something to do with how simple and basic a pot roast is. Usually the foods that get the most attention are complex and a great challenge to prepare (soufflé for example). A well made pot roast on the other hand is a prime example of winter time comfort food. The best part is the gravy this makes, there's nothing like a good beef gravy with some mashed potatoes and, well beef. Now since we know that Spring is officially here what are we doing making comfort food? You'd never know spring is here based on the weather we've been having. It has rained for pretty much the last 10 days. Buckets upon buckets upon buckets. Which is good, we've needed

Spring is here! Eric was all prepared to talk about how spring will be here really soon and we're doing an Early Spring Salad to celebrate when Charisse pointed out that spring came last weekend. Swing and a miss. At least we got that sorted out before the post. The early spring part apparently has to do with the ingredients we used, spring onions and radishes are among the first crops up for harvest in the new year and they are tasty. Oh yeah, and more lemons in here too from the great lemon harvest of 2011. So what are we doing with Spring officially here, grass growing in the backyard and living in California? Staying inside and working on the stuff around the internets because it's been raining for the last week. Raining hard. The kind of rain that makes you never want to leave the house because you can go

We actually get asked a lot about where we get most of our patterned plates and napkins and other awesome kitchen decor for the blog. Truth is that you don't need to spend a bundle to have a variety of items for photography set ups. So today we're going to let you in on our little secret... you ready? This is it... Thrift Stores! Yup, thats right, Goodwill, Savers, garage sales you name it. About once every couple months or so Charisse will sift through our local second hand stores to score a ton of swag for not a lot of money. If you know what you are looking for and have a little knowledge about how to spiff up a used item then you are pretty much guaranteed discover a hidden treasure or two (or five or ten). Actually, not all of our finds are blog related, our favorite over-sized chair

"What should we do for dinner?" was the question Charisse asked the other day. "Cupcakes" came the answer. Yup, cupcakes is what Eric came home with a hankering for and letting up on that dream was not on his agenda. As Charisse had a one sided discussion about dinner, Eric sat and surreptitiously dreamed of different kinds of cupcakes. Red velvet, rich chocolate, cream cheese frosting whipped cream frosting, frosting, Mmmmmmm. After almost 20 minutes of "how about a nice homemade salad or some bread pudding?" being answered with "Hmm, no, I don't think those flavors would make a good cupcake" Charisse gave up and threw her recipe book at him and said "Fine! We can have cupcakes for DESSERT!" Eric earned that lump for sure, but the result was one serious cupcake, Champagne Cupcakelettes! Thats right, mini cupcakes with Champagne. These were cause for some serious celebration, so much so we ended

We set out to create a great St. Patties day post the other day, started poking around, looking for recipes and getting all excited about it (Eric starts playing bagpipe music at his desk starting in early March) but we realized the same the we realize pretty much every year, neither of us are huge fans of Irish food. Irish whiskey? Yes. Irish Beer? Yes. Yes. Fake Irish accents? Yes. Yes. Yes. Irish food? Ehhh not so much. (Charisse says "except stew. I like stew. Put that in there."). Charisse found the recipe and really wanted to try it out. Eric wanted to drink Guinness and pretend to be Irish. Not surprisingly we did both. It's actually a really tasty soup using Charisse's homemade chicken stock for a base. We made of course, far too much. Even giving it away we ended up freezing a ton of it for a later date.

Not long ago we raided our friend Jen's recipe book for one that drives both husbands crazy during the non pumpkin season and last weekend decided that one good dish deserves another. Now this one wasn't nearly as famous as the pumpkin pie bars were but when you've got a hankering for shrimp, butter and a big delicious mess this is the one to turn to. If you can think of something better than a buttery shrimpy mess to top off a wildly busy and productive weekend we'd like to know about it! Why was our weekend wild, busy and productive you ask? We're glad that you did! If you remember waaaay back when we started, we go super excited about finally putting grass in the front yard (and no longer looking like the biggest hillbillies on the block). Well now we're only a few days away from being that

Our hearts and prayers are going out to everyone in Japan right now.Please take a moment to help in any way possible through reputable organizations. We recommend the International Red Cross / Red Crescent Societies. They have a good record of response and pushing as much of the donations they receive directly into crisis situations as possible.If you are looking for someone, Google's Crisis Response Project is a good place to start.

We are so boned, but in a good way. Kinda. See this year for Lent we gave up watching TV (except the last episode of the Bachelor and Sharks games) But other than that, the TV stays dark. It's a big change for us, we usually turn on the Tube and watch GMA over coffee and light chitchat (Eric doesn't really wake up until around 10:30-11, so deep conversations are usually pretty one sided). This morning we ended up just sitting there in silence, staring at each other until Eric quipped "This is going to be a long 40 days". "40 DAYS! I thought Lent lasted like a week!" came the response. Charisse apparently did not pay much attention in Catholic School. Eric thinks this will help us strengthen our relationship and get more stuff done around the house. Charisse isn't so sure, she likes to wind down to reruns of Friends or Bones

As of Sunday night, we were officially wiped out. We're back in full project mode, working on the house, the blog and life in general. For starters, all of our tabs can take comments too! We've also launched our "Home and Garden" tab, where we'll keep you updated on our projects around the house and how our garden is doing. We're also getting ready to launch our new photo platform on Smugmug.com. Right now we are hosting all our images on our Flickr account, which was great when we were new and scrambling to get viewers but we've outgrown what Flickr has to offer, so now we're switching platforms. We plan on rolling out our first Smugmug hosted post later this week, so keep your eyes peeled! Hmm... what else have we been up to, oh yeah! The Backyard! That one teensey little task thats taken us 2 years to